I used to believe that if I loved my family enough, they would eventually love me back.<\/p>\n
I was wrong.<\/p>\n
The night I began to understand that, I was standing in the hallway of our house in Columbus, Ohio, holding my three-week-old daughter.<\/p>\n
Her name was Lily.<\/p>\n
She was so small that her head fit comfortably against my shoulder, and her little fingers kept curling into the fabric of my shirt.<\/p>\n
She had been crying for hours.<\/p>\n
I had tried everything I knew.<\/p>\n
I checked her diaper.<\/p>\n
I warmed another bottle.<\/p>\n
I held her against my chest and walked slowly from one end of the hallway to the other.<\/p>\n
Nothing worked.<\/p>\n
Every time I thought she was settling down, her crying started again.<\/p>\n
My back hurt.<\/p>\n
My eyes burned from exhaustion.<\/p>\n
I had barely slept in days, and I could feel my patience wearing thin in a way that frightened me.<\/p>\n
But I kept rocking her.<\/p>\n
She was only three weeks old.<\/p>\n
She wasn't giving me a hard time.<\/p>\n
She was having a hard time, and she needed her mother.<\/p>\n
That was what I kept telling myself as the clock crept toward midnight.<\/p>\n
Then Patricia Miller appeared at the end of the hallway.<\/p>\n
My mother-in-law had been staying with us to help after the birth.<\/p>\n
At least, that was how everyone described it.<\/p>\n
Help.<\/p>\n
The word sounded generous whenever my husband used it.<\/p>\n
But by that point, I had started to wonder who Patricia believed she was helping.<\/p>\n
She stood there in her nightgown, her mouth pressed into a thin line.<\/p>\n
She looked at Lily.<\/p>\n
Then she looked at me.<\/p>\n
"Can't you get her to stop?"<\/p>\n
I swallowed and adjusted the baby against my shoulder.<\/p>\n
"I'm trying."<\/p>\n
Patricia let out a sharp breath.<\/p>\n
"You've been trying all night."<\/p>\n
I didn't answer.<\/p>\n
I didn't have the energy to explain that I had already checked everything I could think of.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to argue.<\/p>\n
I wanted my daughter to settle down long enough for both of us to rest.<\/p>\n
So I turned slightly and continued rocking.<\/p>\n
That was when Patricia stepped closer.<\/p>\n
I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.<\/p>\n
Then her hand struck my face.<\/p>\n
The sound seemed louder than it should have been.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I couldn't understand what had happened.<\/p>\n
My head turned with the force of the blow.<\/p>\n
My cheek burned.<\/p>\n
Lily startled against me, and her crying grew louder.<\/p>\n
I stood perfectly still.<\/p>\n
Patricia had just slapped me.<\/p>\n
My husband's mother had struck me while I was holding her three-week-old granddaughter.<\/p>\n
I stared at her, waiting for some sign that she understood what she had done.<\/p>\n
An apology.<\/p>\n
A look of regret.<\/p>\n
Anything.<\/p>\n
Instead, she looked angry that I was looking at her.<\/p>\n
"Maybe you should learn how to control things in your own house."<\/p>\n
I could hardly believe what I was hearing.<\/p>\n
My cheek throbbed.<\/p>\n
My arms tightened around Lily.<\/p>\n
I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, I would start crying, and I didn't want Patricia to see that.<\/p>\n
Not because crying was wrong.<\/p>\n
Because I knew she would use it against me.<\/p>\n
She had a way of turning every uncomfortable moment into evidence that I was too emotional, too sensitive, or too inexperienced to know what I was doing.<\/p>\n
I had spent months trying not to give her another reason.<\/p>\n
That night, I realized there was no amount of careful behavior that would make her treat me fairly.<\/p>\n
She had already decided who I was.<\/p>\n
And she didn't need a reason to punish me for it.<\/p>\n
I turned away from her.<\/p>\n
Lily's face was wet, and her tiny mouth opened wide with each cry.<\/p>\n
I pressed my lips against her forehead.<\/p>\n
"It's okay, sweetheart."<\/p>\n
My voice shook.<\/p>\n
I wished I could say the same thing about myself.<\/p>\n
Patricia remained in the hallway for another moment.<\/p>\n
Then she walked away.<\/p>\n
No apology.<\/p>\n
No explanation.<\/p>\n
Just the sound of her bedroom door closing.<\/p>\n
I stayed where I was.<\/p>\n
The house went quiet everywhere except in my arms.<\/p>\n
I wanted to wake my husband.<\/p>\n
I wanted to tell him what his mother had done.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to come into the hallway, look at my face, and understand without making me explain why it mattered.<\/p>\n
But I already knew how that conversation might go.<\/p>\n
He would ask what happened before the slap.<\/p>\n
He would ask whether Patricia had been tired.<\/p>\n
He might remind me that she had come to help us.<\/p>\n
And somehow, before the conversation ended, I would be defending myself instead of asking why his mother had hit me.<\/p>\n
I hated that I could predict it so easily.<\/p>\n
Still, I carried Lily into the nursery.<\/p>\n
The little night-light beside her crib cast a pale circle across the wall.<\/p>\n
I sat in the rocking chair and held her until her cries softened into occasional hiccups.<\/p>\n
My cheek continued to ache.<\/p>\n
Every time I touched it, I remembered the look on Patricia's face.<\/p>\n
She hadn't seemed frightened by what she had done.<\/p>\n
She hadn't even seemed surprised.<\/p>\n
That bothered me almost as much as the slap itself.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether she had treated other people that way.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether she had ever spoken to her son the way she spoke to me.<\/p>\n
And I wondered why I had spent so long convincing myself that her behavior was normal.<\/p>\n
When Lily finally fell asleep, I lowered her carefully into her crib.<\/p>\n
I kept one hand against her little chest until I was sure she was settled.<\/p>\n
Then I went to the bathroom.<\/p>\n
The mirror showed a tired woman with tangled hair and a red mark spreading across one cheek.<\/p>\n
I looked older than I had three weeks earlier.<\/p>\n
Not because of the baby.<\/p>\n
Because of everything I had been trying not to see.<\/p>\n
I ran cold water over a washcloth and held it against my face.<\/p>\n
For a long time, I stood there listening to the refrigerator hum in the kitchen.<\/p>\n
I could hear the house settling around me.<\/p>\n
Somewhere down the hall, Patricia was asleep.<\/p>\n
My husband was asleep.<\/p>\n
And I was standing alone in the bathroom, trying to understand how I had become so afraid of upsetting people who had no problem hurting me.<\/p>\n
I had always thought being a good wife meant being patient.<\/p>\n
Being a good daughter-in-law meant showing respect.<\/p>\n
Being a good mother meant keeping the peace whenever possible.<\/p>\n
But what was I supposed to do when keeping the peace meant accepting something that should never have happened?<\/p>\n
I didn't have an answer.<\/p>\n
Not that night.<\/p>\n
I put the washcloth down and looked at myself one more time.<\/p>\n
Then I made a promise I wasn't ready to say aloud.<\/p>\n
Whatever happened next, I would not let Lily grow up believing that this was how families treated one another.<\/p>\n
I didn't yet know what keeping that promise would cost me.<\/p>\n
But I knew I couldn't pretend the slap had never happened.<\/p>\n
I used to believe that if I loved my family enough, they would eventually love me back. I was wrong. The night I began to understand that, I was standing … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41285,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41281\/revisions\/41285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}